A bit more…

My Projects

Sarah is a service designer, graduated from Glasgow School of Art. She is the first winner of the Medici service design award. Sarah's passion is for improving public services and using design to create social change. Below is a few projects she has worked on

I want MyPolice to be known for giving a voice to people who may have not had one before and creating new dialogues with the police. I want MyPolice to be known as a great platform. I hope, in some way, what we have done and will continue to do will pave the way for the production and delivery of new ideas for our society, across all sectors. I want everyone to believe they can do something that can make a difference.

I care about fairness and equality and believe no one should be treated unfairly or unjustly. I care about people in their communities coming together to work with the police, rather than against them.

It has taken eighteen months and twenty five days to get MyPolice all the way from an award winning idea to reality. Eighteen months and twenty seven days ago I graduated, two days later I won Social Innovation Camp. The winning MyPolice team was me, Kate Ho, Jen Davies, James Brown, Carrie Bishop, Olivier Raynault, Tony Bowden, Charlotte Mc Donald and Gayle Rice.

The winning team

2010 has been a pivotal year for MyPolice in many ways. Most importantly it was the year I joined forces with my now business partner and dedicated partner in crime, Lauren Currie.

Lauren and Sarah presenting at Policing 2.0

We learned really tough lessons in how the police work, the mindset, the culture and how we could make this work. We met Johnathan Briggs, our business advisor who gave us the reality check we needed to take our student hats off and become business women. Johnathan really helped us develop our thinking around taking the good idea that won SICamp to a sound business proposal. We worked non stop in developing our brand and applying for funding.We then received confirmation of funding from 4ip and Firstport which allowed us to bring on board Danyi Feng; a brilliant and talented developer.

Public feedback

The future of MyPolice is an exciting one. We have endless ideas, new functions and steps we can take to use MyPolice to illustrate, document and become a catalyst for change in the police service and communities. I think the future is going to be full of tough decisions, and challenges but I’m confident our team will take on these challenges with gusto and commitment to make MyPolice the best service it can be.

There have been times when it felt like giving up was an option – it has been mentally and physically tough to keep going. Lauren and I lived on fresh air for over six months, Lauren spent the past year endlessly travelling up and down the country meeting Chiefs and understanding what keeps them awake at night ( while I was in undertaking my Masters degree – embedding design in an organisation )

Travelling to London most weeks

There have been so many barriers, out of our control, that we have met along the way. Stations being struck by lightening and a government body stealing our identity to name a few! On a personal level, to get this out there and for MyPolice to become a success would be like completing a marathon and having worn shoes on the wrong feet. I feel a bit bashed around, and a bit thicker skinned, but this will be a real personal triumph to deliver MyPolice, knowing that if you have a big idea, it is possible to deliver it.

HMIC debacle

I didn’t do this on my own. There are far too many people to name and I feel I would forget people if I tried to do so, but you know who you are. I can’t thank you enough. The original team at SIcamp who helped, continued to help and some who have become great friends of mine. Also, 4ip and Firstport who believed in the our goal and enthusiasm.

I have big dreams for MyPolice. I want MyPolice to be used by every force around the UK. Once we have built the site we want to, when mypolice.org is a central hub and geographically savvy to work with complex policing boundaries, produce interesting and service changing data, we want it to be THE platform for police engagement and provide functions around the big society, volunteering, anti-social behaviour, gauge how communities are feeling about their ward, sub division, area and force. We have lots of ideas but importantly we need to focus on right now, keep it simple, do what it says on the tin, and deliver a service.

Understanding the pilot area

The pilot is all about testing the product and getting stories. We are piloting in one area, so taking one small step at a time. We want to see responses from the local community officers we have signed up to MyPolice and a dialogue forming between the Police and the public. I don’t want more, or less than this. We just want enough information to begin building a bigger and better site that will work in a way the public and police need.

Oh and one last thing. Thanks to all of you. MyPolice would not be here without your support, advice and encouragement. The unsung hero in all of this is our lead developer Danyi Feng. Here’s to transforming the way the police and the public communicate.

This morning Snook were kindly invited to take part in Assets Alliance Scotland, an event being jointly held by the Scottish Government, Scottish Community Development Centre and the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland.

“We in Scotland should be proud of our tradition of community involvement and community action and public service delivery’s role in supporting this activity to flourish. However, in the last few years we have developed a model of public service delivery based on a ‘treatment’ or ‘doing to’ approach, which often fails to recognise communities’ and service users’ own strengths and assets and which instead engenders a culture of dependency that, in turn, stimulates demand.”

Before attending the event, I had made a clear connection in my head about how closely this aligned with the work of Liz Sanders.

“Designers will no longer only design for people, they will learn
to design with people. Co-designing will require new forms of
communication to support the collective creativity that arises between
designers and everyday people.”

Working with frontline staff and users as the experts in their own eco-systems/services is a big part of the work I am doing right now. I bring their thoughts and imaginings to life. We take the most optimistic stance we can; an issue can always be solved, there are assets all around us that help to solve a problem or build a brighter future.

The morning was kicked off with Harry Burns, who a participant described his delivery as ‘not usual for a Scottish gov type’. Perhaps, he was right. It was fantastic and inspiring to hear someone talk about a ‘social movement’ rather than a new set of targets or paper/policy being delivered from the government. What really caught my attention was Dr Burn’s citing of the great union activist, Jimmy Reid. Reid’s inaugural speech as rector of Glasgow University in 1972, has really influenced Snook, ( hat tip to Mike Press who highlighted this speech during his keynote at Create Debate.

“A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement.

This is how it starts, and, before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat pack. The price is too high”

“It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.”

Interestingly Dr Burns steered clear of the Big Society agenda and favored the words of Jimmy Reid. This line always brings it home for me;

“A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings”

Sometimes I feel a deep sigh coming on as I soldier through different public sector systems, hoops, and documents. I think sometimes we forget, at the end of the day, we’re all people.

On the people side, after the keynote, participants were invited to browse projects which linked with an asset based approach. I showcased the Getgo Glasgow project and how we mobilised a community to see past their issues and ‘obvious’ solutions to problems in their community. I talked to participants about the power of visualisation and an optimistic mindset. I also showcased other pieces of work such as the Future Library Project and the Innovation Cards.

To add more detail to the visionary approach of Dr Burns, Andrew Lyon of the International Futures Forum set the task of imagining what Scotland’s Asset Alliance priorities should be – what actions need to be taken and what are matters of urgency.

Asset Alliance Scotland as a centre point

It was an interesting discussion. Andrew graciously let everyone voice their opinion at the end of the event. The discussions taught me that we need a framework to house some of this work and break it down into how to ‘do asset based work’. It was obvious that there is already a huge amount of asset based work being done, and it has a history. Perhaps, it’s not always under the label of an ‘asset based approach’ but known as ‘community development’. I’m not saying we ‘teach a granny to suck eggs’ as one participant in my group warned against, but we create a menu of options which breaks down an asset based approach, a framework to house the knowledge gathered through the AAS which is easy to access, understand, share, and importantly learn from and put into practice. For example, a range of options on how to engage with people in communities and connections to people who are experts in this field would be beneficial.

The group deliberated between a top down approach, and whilst I agreed that you need government buy in, I think the last thing that is needed is another strategy/policy document on an asset approach that promotes meaningless, tick box targets. If we’re going to talk targets under the assets agenda, then I think we need to think really carefully how that is conveyed.

Technology curve of adoption

I felt that we could look at the curve of adoption for technology and think about how ‘early adopters’ are the users who begin to write the ‘playbooks’ and ‘how to guides’. Perhaps the AAS would take this role on board and begin pulling together existing networks and organising information.

I noticed the Alliance pulling together ongoing work, and past work, branding it as ‘Assets based’ to build a community of practitioners in Scotland, and develop a framework to house this knowledge. However, I did mention there is a huge need for more interaction across different sectors. Some of the conversations around ‘person-centeredness’, ‘co-creation’ and ‘assets’ are not only relevant to health but to everyone. Our lives are are a holistic combination of services and complex interactions that overlap different sectors on a daily basis.

Importantly, as a chameleon amongst different sectors, this kind of work and demand-led idea is appearing across all sectors, not just health. Take Skills Development Scotland 2010-2011 Corporate strategy, an organisation I worked alongside last year. They talk multiple times over about co-creation and demand-led services, which I think align closely with asset based and coproduction movements and murmurs going on around our country.

Snook competition on assets

The most poignant thought for me at the end was about listening. A participant talked about asking others what assets mean to them and learning from this feedback. This struck a chord with me and I was happy that Snook had given out a small task for participants to capture assets in their community and email the photos back to us. We’re looking forward to peering through them and posting them online, feel free to get involved even if you didn’t pick up a leaflet.

Finally, the reason for this task, and what gets me every time at events like this is the need for a vision. Andrew Lyons had asked us what the AAS will ‘look’ like, yet I saw no hint of visual thinking or communication. This goes deeper than graphically facilitating the discussions that were taking place but the way in which we go forward in discussing the future of the AAS, and the approach we use in the future for the development of our public sector and country.

We need to share projects, the how to, and do it visually. A picture speaks a thousand words and breeds a common understanding which if applied in context of the AAS could mean a shared vision for the meaning of assets, the alliance, and perhaps as Pat Kane called for at Political Innovation camp a few weeks ago, a shared vision for our country. Big talking, but, something keeps hitting a nerve of late at discussions like this. Words like transformation seem to be super seeding ‘change’, ‘improvement’, ‘efficiency’, It feels there are some big ‘shake ups’ that need to happen. With Andrew asking us about urgency today for the AAS, something niggles me even more. I have a feeling the time is now, we need to move fast.

Another Snook adventure under our belt ; this time in Linkoping, Sweden. The occasion? Servdes. Traveling through some thick snow I made it to the conference, this time under the theme of Exchanging Knowledge.

“The Nordic Conference on Service Design and Service Innovation, ServDes, is the premier research conference for exchanging knowledge within service design and service innovation…Service design as a field has established itself as a strong discipline, through efforts in practice and academia. However, publications have mainly focused on establishing service design. There is a growing need for original research on service design. The ServDes conference is an answer to this call…”

In short, it was in-depth and fun. Making it the best event I have taken part in this year. However, I struggled with the delicate balance between practitioners and researchers. This was a recurring theme in some of the discussions I had about academia and practice can can link up and communicate better. As an active practitioner, I’ve just left academia ; finishing a Masters on Embedding design in the public sector which was more action research and reflection than it was academic. For me, this works, because at the end of the day, I want to make change happen. Personally, I’d rather work with academics to document and theorise the work I do on the ground. I’m wondering if Servdes will become the catalyst for making this connection smoother?

Snook were invited to present the case ‘Service Design: social innovation is our motivation’. The presentation reflected on a project, Getgo Glasgow, undertaken last year at the Glasgow School of Art. It depicts some of the issues the design community is facing when undertaking social design/innovation projects within design education. My presentation considered some of the shortfalls in the project ; time frames, delivery and ethics. How do designers leave a project like this ethically? Have we considered the consequences of sending young designers out to engage with communities/users. A film is on the way but for now, you can view the presentation.

“Many problems involve complex social and political issues. As a result, designers have become applied behavioral scientists, but they are woefully undereducated for the task”

This brilliant yet critical article picks on design education for producing undereducated designers who are ‘woefully ignorant of the deep complexity of social and organizational problems.’ In the case of GetGo, the community now have money in the bank and the project is really happening. Wyndford, where the project took place, is small area that are now mobilised as a community. We designed a process not necessarily a designed solution. The result ; Green Gorillaz wasn’t really designed, it was a half baked idea which was the bi-product of design methods and skills being used to work co-creatively with a community.

My presentation actually sparked some interesting conversations about interdisciplinary work, collaboration and the reality that designers are not experts in everything. It pays to know when and how to ask for help. The question and answer session revealed that students struggle with some elements of this type of project. For example, being equipped with the skills and know how to create intangible outcomes that are implementable. This is something we are aiming to get to grips with through our venture: Making Service Sense.

Highlights for me included Daniela Sangiorgi’s talk(s) on ‘Transformative Services and Transformation Designbuilding‘. It looked at building capabilities inside organisations to use and understand design to produce better services. This was an area I felt was overlooked in Berlin at the SDN10 conference and was only just touched upon by Philips. It mimics efforts made by Engine in their Hoop model and echoes sentiments from Martin Neumier’s Designful company which I reflected on for the last 12 months with a public body in Scotland on how to really use design thinking to create better services for the people of Scotland and more informed, people centered policy.

What Daniela put forward echoed closely with some discussions from the workshop run by Anna Serevalli and Anders Emilson. They held a workshop on Social Innovation which looked at the criticisms and plaudits by Geoff Mulgan of design in social innovation. Some of the points our group discussed were;

There were other really good presentations, far too many to mention, in short, a couple more were Marc Stickdorn’s presentation on students and tourism, showcasing how quick and effective service design can be. Also, Simon Clatworthy’s talk on Touchpoint cards was to the point and got some cogs turning about how we could use the template as a basic model to create our own more personalised cards for say tourism, or methods in Service design.

Finally, to end the conference, Global Service Jam was launched by Markus Edgar and Adam St john. It will bring together different countries from all over the world next year to develop new services in under 48 hours and then share them online. They’ve had a fantastic response already and if you want your country to be part of it, then I suggest you get in touch with them.

And not forgetting the unconference day, organised by Design thinkers ; an impromptu, insightful and busy day of talking, doing, and drinking coffee.

I ran a workshop called #swesno, which looked at using design thinking and methods to tackle social issues caused by Snow in Sweden. Wearing santa hats, to get us all in the mood, one group tackled loneliness and isolation with the opportuniy of untapped engergy of kids playing outside in the snow, whilst the other group looked at the issue of ambulances getting stuck in the snow. There will be a another blog post to follow on the outcomes of the workshop. The storyboarding method and pushing people as a vehicle through a new service design worked incredibly well, and took a group of participants 3 hours. They started from scratch, developing and blueprinting new service concepts which the Swedish authorities could implement.

The day capped off with the launch of This is Service Design Thinking. If you haven’t purchased it, do it. It is a very comprehensive textbook which has been co-created by the design community. I am very happy for the authors and am sure both Jakob Schneider and Marc Stickdorn are relieved to see their hard work come to fruition.

To wrap up, these conferences aren’t always just about the learning but are also about the friends you make. It was lovely to make some new European and continental friends and catch up with old ones. It never ceases to amaze me how friendly, open and collaborative the Service Design community can be. Snook are humbled to be part of it.

Huge thanks to Fabian and the rest of the Serv Des team for making this event possible.

I’ve been putting together a final show for the Masters in Design Innovation I have just about finished. On Monday I handed in my thesis and this Monday I will be presenting the work to examiners. It has been a really tough year balancing everything and I’m really happy to invite you all to Create Debate: A design Innovation symposium at the Glasgow School of Art. You can sign up here.

Presentations;

Professor Irene Mcara Mcwilliams will open with an introduction
Professor Mike Press, Associate Dean of Design, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, will discuss ‘Design as an affirmation of values’Jim Fleming, Director at Wider Aspect Innovation ltd, will discuss Some learnings on Innovation Best Practice
David Hicks, Managing Director of Border Crossing will discuss ‘The new economic context – from resources to resourcefulness’
Stuart Bailey, Product Design tutor at the Glasgow School of art will discuss changes in design education

Re-reading NEF’s coproduction pamphlet, published two years ago I was struck by Edgar Cahn’s words on the term being hot on the lips of politicians, on both sides of the atlantic. Now more than ever, with our ‘big society’ and having to do ‘more for less’ it’s time to push Co-production in the mainstream. If you’re not sure what Coproduction is I suggest mulling over the three Nesta reports but for a summary of it’s inception;

“The term ‘co-production’ was coined originally at the University of Indiana in the 1970s when Professor Elinor Ostrom was asked to explain to the Chicago police why the crime rate went up when the police came off the beat and into patrol cars. She used the term as a way of explaining why the police need the community as much as the community need the police.”

Going back to Nef’s publication, this is a stand out for me;

“Neither markets nor centralised bureaucracies are effective models for delivering public services based on relationships. The author of System Failure, Jake Chapman, explains why, with market systems, ‘you can deliver pizza but you can’t deliver public services’. Market logic applies to narrow deliverables, but misses out the crucial dimension that allows doctors to heal, teachers to teach and carers to care: the relationship with patient, pupil or client. Centralised bureaucracies, public and private, find it equally hard to grasp these essentials.”

Following the discussion after the launch of the final Nesta Paper, the above quote from 2008 is very poignant. Designers ask three questions. What, how and why and what I’m experiencing from many of these co-design publications is people asking the how?

I often see elements of design as the process to drive this ideology. To me, the design process seems like the glue that will hold these together, and as a way of driving a co-production manifesto.

The question and answer session showed that this how question is where we get stuck. Garath Symonds who works at Surrey County Council sat on the panel as someone who has pushed this way of working on a local level. Questions were fired at him and his reply was,

“Just do it”

If the audience could have clapped, I feel there may have been a small ripple of applause. Gareth was someone that takes risks and gets this. I have always seen so many parallels between what I’ve done as a service designer and coproduction. Putting users (n.b users also mean staff) at the centre of service design and delivery. The mindset of co-creation (often seen in work I’ve been part of) as a vehicle to develop services and push towards co-production. Co-production is not just a design process and I would never say design is the panacea, but I believe expert facilitation attributed with a design process and involving different experts and frameworks at different stages, would be a good way of driving this process. I’ve seen services and social enterprises produced by designers that embody much of what co-production is about and reach a stage of dellivery. I’ll talk about some other points but Nick Marsh of Sidekick picked up on a great ‘that’s a thing’ point about the dependency of users on public services.

Nesta Co Production

The publication had quite a few recommendations for taking co-production into the main stream.

1. Build the key features of co-production into existing services

2. Change the systems and structures that underpin public services

3. Make it everybody’s business

4. Shift the role of frontline staff

5. Get the best out of ‘personalised’ services

6. Put the right incentives in place

7. Build co-production into the commissioning framework

8. Give priority to prevention

9. Encourage flexibility and collaborative working

10. Measure what matters

11. Launch more prototypes in new sectors

12. Embed co-production as the ‘default’ model through a ‘Co-production Guarantee’

Some tough challenges, co-production works as a small scale project, and something very local, but public services face huge challenges, not just in the way an organisation is structured but in their processes and mindset they will need if they want to adopt co-production as a way of doing.

The publication summarises with future thinking moving away from tick box processes to a more human way forward. The big question is, who is going to take this forward?

“This is a new kind of public sector, with complex relationships rather than complex metrics at its heart.”

And how the hell are we going to measure this? Some of the final words of the event focused on co-production being an inherent value, and to me this rings a bell for something I’ve been considering for a long time…that it’s perhaps not a way of doing, it’s not a process, it’s a way of being.

The idea does perplex me (in a good way) but it’s something I want to be involved in, and I believe in it, it’s just finding a language that can dilute it into a process that will aim to achieve the outcomes it strives to deliver. To finish with the final words of the event,

I’ve been a bit quiet as I’m blogging away on a closed platform, I’m not allowed to share everything I’m up to, but I can cross post occasionally.

I’ve been doing a round of interviews/chats with some fantastic people and just wanted to summarise who I’ve met so far. This is a thank you from me for all your time and knowledge!

The topics ranged from how to embed design in organisations, how project teams might work, encouraging a culture of innovation, systems thinking, meta design, and reflection on what makes up a designer, to name but a few.

There’s an event taking place as I write this, from my ‘borrowed’ desk at Skills Development Scotland, that I rather wish I’d been able to attend. Snook received an email last month inviting us to an expert seminar being held by RSA Design & Society, unfortunately we can’t make it because of work commitments.

It is time we see designers switching from outside consultancy to in-house design team, and I don’t just mean a team that designs the company’s ‘look’. It’s time we saw design teams operating at the heart of organisations.

I’ve been working with Skills Development Scotland since September and am about to embark on a larger piece of work for them, designing a toolkit for frontline staff. But it’s the structure of the organisation that needs to be designed in tangent. If you supply people with a design toolkit to ‘see’ things differently and start generating ideas for frontline service delivery and internal operations, you need to support this.

Since being here, I’ve noticed a need for everything to be designed, even down to the last word on a project initiation document. For example, I recall reading a document that used terms like, ‘how can we mitigate this circumstance’ and ‘how can we terminate this operation without lasting damage’?

Through some research I did at the beginning of September last year, I found a majority of service designers turning out to be ENFJs.

“ENFJ (Extraversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Judgment) is an abbreviation used in the publications of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to refer to one of sixteen personality types.[1] The MBTI assessment was developed from the work of prominent psychiatrist Carl G. Jung in his book Psychological Types. Jung proposed a psychological typology based on the theories of cognitive functions that he developed through his clinical observations.”

This is research at some stage I’d like to push further into, I’ve always been fascinated a bit by the way we are, our personalities and the choices we make, and a book I dabbled in recently, ‘The challenge of change in organisations’, has spurred this interest even further.

In short, designers are ‘positive optimists’, I found myself (an ENFJ incase you’re wondering) asking, could we change, ‘how can we mitigate this circumstance’ to ‘can we find a way to solve this wicked problem?’. Witnessing a lecture last year by John Wood from Goldsmiths, I was fascinated by his description of designers being able to make the ‘unimaginable possible’ and working towards ‘attainable utopias’. I will save all this for another blog post, but google meta design and go exploring, I’m still trying to get my head round it all.

In an organisation of over 1300 people, change in an organisation is going to be a massive challenge, and you need a positive mindset to want to tackle it. I’m looking forward to my next batch of work kicking off and dealing with the small and larger picture of SDS. How can you embed design thinking into an organisation so large? How can you envisage and implement new processes and ways of doing things?

As Emily points out, this new type of embedded design teams have been described as Service Designers. Why? My take is that service designers have the skills and tools necessary to bring the intangible to life.

Like myself, Emily asks some key questions, the language barrier I feel to be the most critical,

“In practical terms, what is the job description for an in-house designer with a holistic brief? How does an organisation intent on embedding design go about recruiting designers? How is the effectiveness of staff designers paid for their holistic view to be measured? How does the design of services, structures and strategy respond to cost-benefit analysis? How is the language barrier between designers and other specialists to be overcome? How are creativity and innovation to be managed within large and often cautious or risk-averse organisations?”

In practical terms for Skills Development Scotland, it’s a ‘service designer’ and I dare you to take up the challenge.